Tag Archives: narcissistic sociopath

Wake up call for federal employees: In the era of Trumpery, life is really lived on the edge of insolvency and pain. Forty percent of the American people cannot cover a single $1,000- emergency. Most federal employees, though slightly better paid than their counterparts in private industry, live maybe a couple of paychecks ahead. The cost of living is much higher than the bogus government calculation of low inflation. Like most Americans, they have little savings to tide them over during a government shutdown.

No Respect

FAA air traffic Controllers are some of the most competent and dedicated professionals I have ever met. They operate in a high-stress environment where the “clearances” they issue to pilots in the national airspace routinely carry life and death implications. Especially during high traffic periods and under rapidly changing weather conditions, their prowess in skillfully coordinating the flight paths and altitudes of multiple high-speed jet airliners and slower small planes is amazing.

Near Miss. Photo: JetlineMarvel.net

As a long time pilot, I understand the “mission critical” character of the everyday work of these federal employees. I remember distinctly when Ronald Reagan busted their union resulting in the loss of some of the best most experienced controllers then operating. I noticed immediately thereafter, an unmistakable drop in the quality of air traffic control operations. I felt I had to be extra careful to maintain a reasonable level of safety in the air.

Many other federal employees live with far less daily stress on the job. I have envied the National Park Rangers for the serene environment of their work out there in the beautiful National Forests that the plutocrats would privatize for oil and mineral extraction. Most people take federal workers for granted or just dismiss them as “bureaucrats,” especially if things don’t go well when they interact with overworked IRS agents or Social Security workers processing their paperwork.

Yet, the work of these diverse employees of the nation is important to one or another element of the everyday operation of the society itself. That importance becomes ever clearer when an arbitrary demand by the president forces a government shutdown because the Congress will not roll over to the bully who’s pretensions to power cannot grasp the basic concept of the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government.

Moreover, these folks have been arbitrarily made victims of the “government shutdown” that Trump forced by demanding the Congress pay for his ill-conceived and poorly defined wall along the Mexican border. It is especially disconcerting when we find out that the “border wall” meme originated as a mnemonic device conjured by his campaign staff to help him remember to talk about immigration to better pander to his xenophobic base.

Illusions of Border Security

In various places along the border, walls already exist because federal agencies deemed them effective, particularly around urban ports of entry. The Congress voted to fund them as part of prior border security legislation. It is widely known that most trafficking of drugs, about which Trump feigns such concern, cross into the U.S. through the busiest border crossings in passenger vehicles or trucks. Is a wall going to have any effect on that? Of course not.

Trump’s Border Wall could waste Billions. Photo: New York Times

Never mind the fact that illegal crossings from Mexico have steadily decreased for decades. Never mind that Trump violates the federal laws that allow applications for asylum by the victims of ruthless gangs and bloodthirsty dictators that U.S. foreign policies have caused or supported. However, let us not ignore the vicious persecution of children and their families that the obsessive xenophobia and demagoguery of a rogue president and an unhinged federal agency called ICE have caused.

Some say Trumplandia is the natural progression of the growing plutocracy in the U.S. since Reagan. True enough. But plutocrats abhor the messiness of democracy and care little about the pain they inflict on the people. When narcissistic sociopathic politicians have pretensions of authoritarian rule, as does Trump, the pain inflicted upon the people within and at the border becomes intolerable.

In September 2018, the Trump administration produced a realistic environmental impact report that reflected current scientific estimates of emerging climate chaos. That alone was a bit shocking given Trumpist rhetoric claiming that climate change is a “Chinese hoax.” But the political misuse of that information was shockingly brazen, if not exactly surprising.

After all, presidential prevarication is the “new normal” in American politics. The ill logic in this particular case is tremendously twisted. The administration wants to roll back fuel efficiency standards in the transportation industry. The latest scientific estimates of anthropogenic heating of the planet if present emissions continue, predict as much as 4 degrees additional average heating of the Earth within the next few decades if the global economy continues on its current path.

That alone is shocking enough. The near-term consequences of that predicted heating will be devastating in several ways. Greater destruction from more frequent and intense super storms, sea rise that will threaten the world’s major coastal cities, the death of most of the world’s coral reefs, longer more intense droughts and more powerful floods, etc., etc. However, in Trumplandia the “logic” goes like this: The emissions from trucks and cars add up to such a small part of the total that we really need not bother restricting carbon emissions from them.

International Hypocrisy

Of course, the rapidly accelerating carbon emissions from human activity energized by the burning of fossil fuel since around 1950 has been so great that scientists have labeled it “the Great Acceleration.” Scientists expect total global emissions to continue rising next year since most nations are doing so little to curtail even more carbon spewing into the atmosphere. Despite the international agreements signed by almost every nation at the 2015 Paris Climate talks, no nation has taken serious steps to control their emissions since then. The scope of the necessary response is daunting at best. Every nation seems to be waiting for someone else to take the first step. Yet, the problem is now, with no time to delay to avoid global catastrophe.

So, as with several other treaty obligations, such as the international agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, Trump decided to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords. You might argue that the withdrawal doesn’t really matter since the agreement has no teeth. The agreed reductions are not mandatory, just vague intentions.

No nation’s leaders want to jeopardize economic growth or bear the costs of complying with the agreements. However, the costs of failure to do so will be so great to the human condition that such concerns appear to be somewhere on the far side of foolish. Besides, the process of converting to clean (solar and wind) sources of energy production will create more jobs than so-called leaders can imagine. So will programs to insulate existing buildings, which contribute a lot of the energy waste worldwide. So, why do the world’s leaders balk at doing the right thing?

Nihilist Power Elites Overpower the Public Interest

The problem, of course, is that such major economic transformations threaten existing financial interests of the world’s power elites. The most powerful financial interests in the world are closely tied to the fossil fuel industry. The further enrichment of the richest of the rich is also good for business at various Trump Towers around the world. The petulant president is enriching himself by enriching the ultra-rich elites of the world.

For the nihilist, nothing is forbidden. The only value is to exercise more and more power to satisfy the endless narcissistic demands of the sociopath. Of course, when such practices become a central feature of government, the threat of rising fascism grows with every moral transgression. Every act of demagoguery attempting to incite mass fear and anger in support of the self-imagined authoritarian ruler is another step on the road to fascist dictatorship. Do not believe those who say, “It can’t happen here.”